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Futfanatico is thrilled to announce this exclusive interview with a terrible person who scores goals for your favorite European soccer club, Barcentus CF. We are incredibly grateful to Carlos Luis Suavez’s PR folks for arranging this interview and hope he can finally dispel the rumors contrary to his being a terrible human being who scores goals.

Q: Carlos Luis Suavez, what has life been like on the Continent since your big summer move?

Yesterday’s clasico was a tale of two halves. Or so say the headlines. In fact, many headlines refer to a game as a “tale of two halves.” Your cerebral self chuckles and thinks: no shit. Doesn’t every game of soccer consist of two halves? Isn’t that, like, kinda the fundamental rule and proportion of time? Could a headline be any less descriptive?

You know the drill. I wrote about soccer for various outlets. Follow the map to then read my writing about soccer at various outlets. Yes, this is a link-post. However, in addition to my own writing, there were some good words typed about the MLS CBA negotiations from other folks.

I’ve written extensively here about the online soccersphere. Sometimes, I take potshots at sleazy mods and catty subreddits. Other times, I focus on copyright law and how trolls try to twist the arms of upstart sites who arguably follow the spirit and letter of the DMCA law. For example, I wrote about the US legal saga of the Spanish website RojaDirecta. Roja survived bogus DMCA complaints and even an illegal seizure by the US federal government.

During last Saturday’s clasico, my twitter feed was curiously silent. Was I in shock after the first half? Was I silently exuberant during the second? No and no. I was driving across Houston to my son’s game and then at a Halloween gathering. Thanks to Dishworld and BeIN Sports, I could watch the game later. Thus, I carefully avoided the excellent Guardian cellphone app, Facebook, Twitter, and incoming text messages and WhatsApp messages from the known entities.

The furling eyebrow. The non-abrasive press conferences. The jovial laugh. Carlo Ancelotti is definitively not Jose Mourinho. Thanks in large part to signings, he’s re-made the Real Madrid roster into an attacking 4-3-3 with little regard for, say, defending. Gone is the counter-attacking 4-2-3-1, the crossfield switches of Xabi Alonso, the darting runs of Di Maria, the lackadaisical drifting of Ozil.

It’s easy to view modern footballers as soulless mercenaries, to assume they feel no emotion whatsoever for a club or the fans. But we don’t really know any and all footballers. What if they just crush a lot? What if they are merely Don Juans, men with feelings who just happen to fall head over heels for the newest club and immediately forget the prior one? That may cheapen their prior feelings, but it doesn’t deny they existed.

The bright lights at Old Trafford. The cramped, noisy box that is Stamford Bridge. The vibrating vibrancy of the Bernabeu. The vertigo-inducing steepness of the Camp Nou. You know nothing about any of these places. You’ve never been to them. The closest you’ve come was a week-long school trip in high school to Spain where the autobus had to stop every half hour because paella gave your classmates the shits.

Cristiano knows of many reasons for the absolute thievery in the latest Clasico and is not afraid of telling the world. Nothing will stop him naming and shaming these parties and/or organisations who will do him (oh and his team) wrong. For it must be told.

It’s been, say, four years since my last intra-sport comparison. At Run of Play in 2010, I looked at college basketball to talk about Barca’s possession game, the half court offense, and Chinese water torture. A year earlier, I reflected upon the Chicago Fire career of one Cuautehmoc Blanco and another comparison stuck: Steve Nash at Phoenix.

Both were a bit aged. Neither played much defense. Yet both were indisputably the catalyst for their team’s respective offense. Recently, another NBA/Soccer comparison dawned on me: Steve Kerr of the Chicago Bulls during the 1990′s and Pedro of Barcelona and Furia Roja fame.